In 2001, a week before George W. Bush took the oath of office, the Forest Service dropped a bombshell. It released the 1,800 page Sierra Nevada Framework, a plan for how to manage 11.5 million acres of Sierra Nevada forests to protect the California spotted owl, reduce wildfires and protect habitat. Unlike previous plans, which […]
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Posted inRange
Towards a greater Canyonlands
This week the U.S. Senate is wading through nearly 100 budget amendments tacked onto the federal spending bill. This continuing resolution—which would prevent a government shutdown and fund federal agencies through the rest of the year—includes some unrelated, politically-charged measures which, while ultimately non-binding, give an interesting peek into political agendas. According to aides, GOP […]
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The enviros’ new money man
On Monday, Congressman Steve Lynch, a Democrat seeking his party’s support to run for the Massachusetts Senate seat vacated by our new Secretary of State, John Kerry, received a menacing letter. “Because climate change is such a serious issue,” it read, “we are asking you, Congressman Lynch, today to do one of two things by high […]
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An upside to the gun-buying frenzy
The last five years have been quite nice for the firearm industry. Gun and ammunition makers had a bonanza in 2009, thanks to fears that a newly-elected President Obama would sent out jackbooted, United Nations thugs in black helicopters to steal their guns (and maybe build bike paths, too!). It didn’t happen, of course. Yet […]
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The West’s best critter-cams
In the usual Monday-morning email deluge, one message caught my eye: “Live Webcam Captures Peregrine Falcons Laying Eggs.” The advertised falcon was in Maine, not around here, but who can resist peeking at a rare bird on her nest? It’s sort of like looking in somebody’s windows, except in a non-creepy way that won’t get […]
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To kill or not to kill?
Recently, it seems people on both sides of the pond have horse slaughter on the brain. In Europe, the discovery of horsemeat in Ikea’s purportedly all-beef meatballs has countries pointing fingers at each other, trying pin the blame for mislabeled meat on someone else. Ultimately, the issue seems to boil down to different degrees of […]
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Uranium ban rethink?
When I read that mining companies are pressuring the Navajo Nation to let them mine uranium on Diné land I thought: What gall. After all, the Navajos banned uranium mining on the reservation back in 2005, and for good reason. From World War II until the mid-1980s, the federally-subsidized uranium industry pulled some 4 million […]
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Forests test-drive collaboration
It was a big deal when the Forest Service introduced its new planning rule in 2012. The rule dictates how the nation’s 155 national forests and 20 national grasslands write their individual plans, which in turn regulate nearly every aspect of how these public lands are managed: where logging and grazing occur, what’s set aside […]
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Are tree-sitters felons?
Recently, civil disobedience has been making a comeback. From 2011’s scruffy Occupy movement to the Sierra Club’s coat-and-tie White House protest of the Keystone XL pipeline last month, risking arrest to make a statement hasn’t been this high profile in a long time. In Oregon, environmentalists have a long history of getting arrested and putting […]
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‘We are the decider.’
Several years ago, two off-road enthusiasts threw their backs into building and improving a trail through Utah’s Recapture Canyon near Blanding. They used picks and shovels, added culverts and retaining walls. They likely had the support of many local off-roaders, eager for new places to four-wheel. What they did not have was permission to build […]
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Fire suppression flip-flop
Last May, the Forest Service made news by announcing it was going to suppress all fires burning on its lands. The memo, issued by James Hubbard, Deputy Chief of State and Private Forestry, instructed fire-line officers to get approval from their supervisors before doing anything but full suppression—effectively discouraging the practice of letting some fires […]
Posted inRange
Grand Canyon State Park?
We have been immersed in another round of what some like to call “public lands theater,” the seemingly endless war over who best to manage or, perhaps even own, the federal land estate of the United States. Last year the Arizona legislature tried to demand almost all the federal lands within its boundaries, even the […]
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Energy imbalance WTF?!
A few weeks ago, certain sectors of the environmental/renewable energy community got all fired up. We had reached a “major turning point” said one blogger. Another called the mid-February news a “milestone.” So what was all the fuss about? Did we manage to pull some charismatic megafauna away from the brink of extinction? Or perhaps […]
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Locally-grown climate conversations
After reporting on climate change and natural disasters in Australia, South America, the U.S., and Mongolia, science journalist Julia Kumari Drapkin grew frustrated with the failure of traditional media to convey how climate impacts our daily lives. Part of the problem is scientific. Climate models, and the climate itself, work over large expanses of space […]
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Here comes the sun?
On March 11, 2011, the 500-foot smokestack of the Mohave Generating Station, a notoriously dirty coal-fired power plant in far southern Nevada, was spectacularly demolished. From 1971 until 2005, the plant had gobbled coal and sucked groundwater from neighboring lands belonging to the Hopi and Navajo, who had a complicated relationship to the plant and […]
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Moose in need of a boost
A few years ago, I was driving through Northern Maine on my way to hike Mt. Katahdin, the state’s highest peak and terminus of the Appalachian Trail. A small crowd of hunters had gathered outside a game inspection station, and I stopped to see what they’d shot. A jolly man in an orange vest was […]
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Living the small government dream
updated 3/7/13 Let me begin with a confession: I have a professional crush on Ryan Lizza – the master of longform political profiles. Nearly every time I read one of his New Yorker stories – fascinating windows into our political culture and the sausage making side of lawmaking (or, as it may be, political posturing […]
Posted inRange
Yea or nay?
There’s renewed movement in Congress on some legislation that would affect our public lands in a big way. Bills to create wilderness areas, combat bark beetles and streamline mining and grazing will be debated, and despite having “improvement” and “protection” in their names, not all would not encourage sustainable or resilient ecosystems in the West. […]
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Pollinator problems
What works twice as hard as a domesticated honeybee? Its wild, free-living relatives. Much of the food we eat is pollinated by bees, and it turns out that wild bees are significantly more effective than domestic honeybees at causing flowers to produce fruit. That finding is just one in a set of new studies reinforcing […]
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Rants from the Hill: Upon the burning of our house
“Rants from the Hill” are Michael Branch’s monthly musings on life in the high country of Nevada’s western Great Basin desert, published the first Monday of each month. When I say that American writers have ignited fires, I don’t mean only that they have fired our imaginations or that they have sparked changes in the […]